For most communications services, prior art communications network architecture limits a subscriber's ability to freely select services and/or service providers. For example, most subscribers are constrained to receive their local communications services exclusively from the carrier e.g., a local phone company, or a cable television operator, serving the geographical area where those subscribers live. Thus, those subscribers are limited to the services provided by their serving local carrier(s) singly or in agreement with other carriers. For some other communications services, such as long distance or cellular communications services, subscribers typically have more freedom in the selection of service providers. However, the inflexibility of today's communications network architecture prevents subscribers from freely mixing and matching features from different carriers for a particular service. Thus, a problem of the prior art is a rigid communications architecture which does not allow subscribers to select feature and/or services from competing carriers on a call-by-call basis or on a subscription basis.
Another problem of the prior art is the inability of end-users who have access/egress facilities to multiple competing carriers to specify a particular carrier from which they want to receive incoming communications services.